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Photo of
Valley Forge National Historic Park by James Lemass

Health Care: Is the Canadian
Health Care System Better Than America's?

The
Left Says:

"Does this mean
that the American way is wrong and that we should switch to a
Canadian-style single payer system? Well, yes."

Source:
New York Times columnist
Paul Krugman, as cited by Sally C. Pipes, "Health
Care, Canadian Style," FoxNews.com, September 18, 2004.1

What
Conservatives Think:

Canadians increasingly are frustrated by structural weaknesses
within their own government-financed health care system.

A February
2004 Canadian Medical Association poll revealed that only 14
percent of Canadians believe their country has a sufficient number
of doctors. 49 percent of Canadians said either they or a member
of their household had to wait "longer
than you thought was reasonable" to see a medical specialist
within the last year. 38 percent gave the same answer when asked
about access to their family physician, and 31 percent said so
about access to advanced diagnostic procedures.2

A whopping 74 percent of Canadians
were concerned about long waits for access to emergency room
services, while seven percent said they or a member of their
household had suffered deteriorating medical conditions as a
result of delays in access for care over the past year. Two percent
of Canadians actually reported that a member of their household
had died waiting for health care.3

Why the waiting times? In Canada, says Dr. Robert J. Cihak, M.D.,
former president of the American Association of Physicians and
Surgeons, "If the Canadian government says it provides a
particular medical service, it is illegal for a Canadian citizen
to pay for and obtain that service privately. At the same time,
the Canadian government bureaucracy rations medical services."

So shortages are inevitable.
Says Dr. Cihak:

In a May/June 2004 article
in the journal Health Affairs, researcher Robert Blendon
and colleagues described the results of a survey of hospital
administrators in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, the
United States, and Canada. Fifty percent of the Canadian hospital
administrators said the average waiting time for a 65-year-old
man requiring a routine hip replacement was more than six months.
Not one American hospital administrator reported waiting periods
that long. Eighty-six percent of American hospital administrators
said the average waiting time was shorter than three weeks; only
3 percent of Canadian hospital administrators said their patients
had this brief a wait."4

Says Sally Pipes, a Canadian
who runs the U.S.-based Pacific Research Institute and who is
the author of a book on the Canadian system:

Between 1993 and 2003, [in
Canada] the median waiting time from referral by a general practitioner
to treatment increased by 90 percent, from 9.3 weeks to 17.7
weeks, according to an annual survey of physicians by the Vancouver-based
Fraser Institute. For cancer patients, the waiting time for medical
oncology more than doubled from 2.5 weeks to 6.1 weeks, and the
waiting time for radiation oncology increased from 5.3 weeks
to 8.1 weeks. That's the experience of 58-year-old Don Cernivz,
who noticed blood in his urine in fall of 2003. He waited three
weeks for his first diagnostic test and then another month for
an MRI. Actual treatment for his cancer of the pelvis didn't
commence until May of the following year. "The waiting time
is ridiculous at the hospital," his daughter complained
to the Calgary Herald. "He is in pain."5

According to the Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development (an international organization
of 30 member nations), in 2001, 63 percent of Americans reported
a waiting time of one month or less for elective surgery, compared
to 37 percent of Canadians. 32 percent of Americans waited 1-3
months for elective surgery compared to 36 percent of Canadians.
Only five percent of Americans reported waits of four months
or more for such procedures, compared to 27 percent of Canadians.6

In September 2004, an article
by Canadian researchers appearing in Circulation: Journal
of the American Heart Association reported that Canadian
heart attack patients run a 17 percent greater risk of dying
than their U.S. counterparts. The researchers concluded that
the reason for higher Canadian mortality following heart attacks
lay in the difference between the way the Canadian and U.S. health
systems are organized.7

Advocates of a Canadian system
do tout this benefit: Patients pay nothing for services. But
this this accurate? Only for those patients who aren't Canadian
taxpayers. Twenty-two percent of all of Canada's tax revenues
go to pay for Canada's health care system.8

That's a lot of money for Canadian
citizens to spend for a service they can't be sure they'll get.